On Jan 21, 2011, at 4:35 PM, Laurence Libin wrote: > In your collective opinion, is Sauter sufficiently distinctive and > important historically to deserve an entry in Grove? Other criteria > include quality, innovation, influence. I don't have space for every > respected maker but wouldn't want to overlook anyone remarkable. > Advice appreciated, and any other suggestions. A short compendium of facts on which you might base a decision: Old company, founded 1819, continues to be partially owned by the founding family. Argued to be possibly the oldest in that respect (Ibach being the other candidate). Made uprights only until after WWII (probably squares as well early on). So they were not especially at the forefront of things. The exception comes in 1933(?) with the building of a set of microtonal upright pianos (and one grand at 1/3 tone I believe, which now makes me wonder about the information of being exclusively uprights and how long) for the Mexican composer Julian Carillo. Exhibited at a world exposition to some acclaim, but mostly forgotten until the latter part of the 20th century, when a couple pianists and composers got serious with a remaining 1/16 tone instrument. They persuaded Sauter to put it back in production, and it is an available model today. Some interesting music has been composed for it (I have a CD, and the music is remarkable for its variety, in using the available sonic resources). Not that widely known, though, outside a fairly small circle. Who knows if it will grow into something significant. The grands are very well made. There is an openness to experimentation and connection with modern music. For instance, all their large grands have the damper heads corresponding to white keys painted with a white stripe, and there are colored lines on the soundboard corresponding to three nodes, all very useful for inside the piano playing. I believe these are Sauter exclusives. On the concert grand, they use titanium bridge pins and an ebony bridge cap in the high treble, among other features. This yields a great deal of clarity of tone. They are far more forward thinking than some of the Germanic firms (Bosey and Bluthner in particular), but not so close to the edge as Steingraeber. So I guess it depends how many you are including and on exactly what basis. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Twain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110121/ce78e2b6/attachment.htm>
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